In a digital subscriber line (DSL) deployment, stationary and impulsive, noises are generated within the home environment, which impact the reliability of the wide area network (WAN) interface of a residential device delivering network services such as IPTV. Sources of such disturbances include house appliances, such as vacuum cleaners, lamps, or equipment, such as pool pumps, washing machines, etc. Noise characteristics may evolve with time, as noise sources turn on or off, or as noise sources move closer or farther away from a point of coupling with the DSL line.
The G.ploam standard (G.997.1), together with G.992.x DSL standards, provide performance monitoring functions, test, diagnostics and status parameters that characterize the behavior of the DSL line and channel under noisy conditions. Two important primitives for monitoring the channel at the customer premises (CPE) are downstream per bin signal to noise ratio (SNR) array and the impulse noise monitoring counters impacting the downstream receiver. The line performance monitoring counters defined in G.997.1 are aggregated by the CPE over a 15 minute and 24 hour window, and the central office (CO) can poll and obtain these counters.
These counters provide little granularity or visibility to changes of noise conditions that take place in between two instances of data collection. Moreover, no attempt is made in G.997.1 and G.996.2 (i.e. the line testing standards for DSL) to qualify the noise environment, by appropriately describing the noise constituents of all aggregate noises affecting a particular DSL line. Hence, there is a need for a diagnostics tool that provides fine granularity to track noise variation, as well as that makes an attempt to identify individually and to track the various noise sources that make up an aggregate noise environment affecting a DSL channel.